of the Company; and for English by several members of the court of the Company, the last being called the Windermere prize, on the opening of the new school. Each of the prizes have an endowment of £100, invested in Consols in the names of the trustees of the property of the Company. Sir Moses Montefiore also gave £100, in 1851, to found a prize for classics, which is invested in Consols in the names of the Master and Wardens of the Company.

There is a special scholarship class for those who have passed the Oxford Local Examination, but the Great Crosby scholarship is usually awarded as the result of this examination. It is of the yearly value of £40, and is not awarded if no candidate is equal to a first-class in the Senior Local Examination, and on this ground it has been twice withheld. Except on one occasion, it has always been held in Oxford or Cambridge.

In addition to the Head Master, there are thirteen assistant masters, including the drawing master, who visits the school twice weekly. Nearly all of these are university graduates- several of high distinction in fact, the range of education is that of the great public schools of England.

The boys' school has had a most successful career under the able guidance of the Rev. Canon Armour, and has taken a very high place amongst the secondary schools-pupils attending from Liverpool in the south, and Southport in the north, besides others from the Cheshire side of the Mersey. Scholars have taken excellent positions in the local examinations, and also numerous scholarships or exhibitions (many at Oxford and Cambridge), representing every one of the main lines of study in the school, viz.: classics, mathematics, natural science, modern languages, modern history, and divinity.

Of the girls' school Miss Isabel Bolton still continues headmistress, and is assisted by six regular assistant mistresses and six visiting masters and mistresses, who attend for some subjects only, including a medical man, who teaches hygiene, ambulance and sick nursing. The school was opened with 20 scholars and now contains 135.

The fees paid by the girls are: by those under twelve, £8; by those over, £10 yearly. Extra per annum charged for solo singing and instrumental music, £6 for a master, and £4 10s. for a mistress. 25. per term is charged for school stationery; and the same charges are made for registration and entrance as in the boys' school.

The four highest classes are obliged to choose between German and Latin. Two exhibitions only have been granted under the scheme, of £40 each, and tenable for two years.

The girls' school is so new, it has not yet had time to distinguish itself in the same way as the boys'.

For the view of the western doorway, and for the plate of masons' marks, I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. W. F. Price and Mr. W. E. Gregson respectively, to whom I tender my grateful thanks.

EARLY CHARTERS

OF THE KNIGHTS HOSPITALLERS,

RELATING TO MUCH WOOLTON,
NEAR LIVERPOOL.

By Robert Gladstone, Junior, B.C.L., M.A.

SIX

Read 18th December, 1902.

IX of the charters which form the subject of the present paper were discovered by the writer in the muniment room at Aston Hall, near Frodsham, in Cheshire. The other charter is preserved at Arley Hall, also in Cheshire, and is now published for the first time."

The editing of these documents has been a task of considerable difficulty, for, in the first place, there is no adequate history of Woolton,3 nor even

1 I am indebted to Mr. John Hargreaves, a member of the Council of this Society, for drawing my attention to the fine charters at Aston Hall. There is a possibility that some of them will be acquired by the British Museum. The thanks of the Society are due to the proprietors of the charters for kindly permitting them to be published.

2 Its existence was noted, in 1866, by W. Beamont in his catalogue of the Arley charters (4to, Newton, Lancs., p. 32), but he supposed it to refer to Woolston, near Warrington. It was also mentioned in Ormerod's Cheshire (see the account of Charter II below)

3 A very creditable paper on the history of Woolton (considering the sources within his reach) was read by the Rev. R. E. Roberts, curate there, before the Woolton Literary and Debating Society, and was printed in the Garston Weekly News for 21 December, 1895, and for 4 January and 11 January, 1896.

of the barony or lordship of Widnes. in which Woolton is situated. Secondly, on careful examination, all the printed lists of the Priors of the English Knights Hospitallers proved to be wholly unreliable, at all events as regards the Priors of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.5 And, as the index to the great Cartulaire général of the Order is not yet published, that large work had to be searched page by page for evidence of the dates of the English Priors. In addition, the writer has been obliged to make prolonged searches at the British Museum and at the Public Record Office in London.

All these charters relate to Much Woolton, and not to Little Woolton. In proof of this it is necessary to state that Much Woolton was granted to the Hospitallers by John, Constable of Chester and Baron of Halton and Widnes, and that Little Woolton was granted to the Hospitallers by his son Roger in 1203 or 1204.8 The date of John's

4 Some account of the Barons of Halton and Widnes (but not very satisfactory as regards the earlier portion) will be found in W. Beamont's Halton, &c., 4to, Warrington, 1873.

5 I have prepared a very complete chronological table of the Priors of the English Hospitallers, with facsimiles of their charters and seals, which I hope to publish before long. Almost all the lists in print are mere abstracts of Dr. Matthew Hutton's list, which is printed in Newcourt's Repertorium (i, 668, &c.), and which is based upon the thoroughly bad list on the last leaf of Cotton MS. (Brit. Mus.), Nero E. vi. See note 66 below.

6 By M. J. Delaville Le Roulx, 3 vols. and supplement, folio Paris, 1894, &c. I am sorry to have to say that several of the charters of the Priors of the English Hospitallers are quite wrongly dated in this splendid work. I shall refer to it hereafter as "Cart. gén." A paper by the same author, on the seals of the English Priors, with remarks on their chronology, was published in 1881 in the Mélanges of the French School at Rome, with a supplementary note in 1887. This paper is full of serious errors. Nevertheless, I have derived much useful information from both publications.

7 The charters themselves show this. Space will not permit me to discuss here the manner in which the Barons of Halton (near Runcorn) acquired the lordship of Widnes, a point on which some very contradictory opinions are in print

8 Roger's grant of Little Woolton is discussed below.

II

grant of Much Woolton is not known, but the grant must have occurred before 1185,1° and in all probability was made about 1178, in which year John founded Stanlaw Abbey. Accordingly it would be fairly safe to say that the grant of Much Woolton was made between 1175 and 1185. John himself died in 1190," and as five of the charters are anterior to that year, it is clear that none of them can relate to Little Woolton. As regards the two remaining charters. the indorsements on them state that they refer to Much Woolton; moreover, they were found tied to some of the earlier charters in an ancient wooden box labelled 'Magna Wollton.'

It is natural to suppose that John the Constable granted the whole of Much Woolton to the Hospitallers, though the charters themselves do not say so much.13 At all events in later times we find that

9 I searched for his grant in vain in the chartularies of the Hospitallers at the British Museum. Very probably it might be found among the records of Yeaveley in Derbyshire, to which (as we shall presently see) Woolton was once attached. Or it may be preserved among the manorial records of Woolton itself, which are said to be in the possession of the Marquis of Salisbury at Hatfield.

10 See Charter I below.

II Whalley Coucher (Chetham Soc.), p. 5.

12 He certainly was alive on 3 September, 1189 (Benedictus, ii, 80), and died at Tyre, apparently in 1190 (see the list of deaths in Benedictus, ii, 148, not all of which, however, occurred in 1190, and compare Hoveden, iii, 88). His son Roger had apparently succeeded him by about the middle of 1191 (Benedictus, ii, 232-3). The date, II October, 1190, given for John's death by the Dictionary of National Biography (xxxi, 388) is apparently a compound of the impossible date, 11 October, 1183, given in the unreliable Historia Laceiorum (Monasticon, v, 534), and of the date given by Benedictus and Hoveden. The same work in opposition to the best authority-Whitaker's Whalley, 4th ed., i, 240, notesgives John the surname de Lacy.

13 In the Testa de Nevill (p. 403) it is stated that the aforesaid John the Constable gave to the Hospitallers two carucates of land [at Much Woolton], whereas the true rating of Much Woolton was three carucates. This might lead one to imagine that John did not grant the whole of Much Woolton to the Hospitallers, were it not that in the next entry we find the rating [of Little Woolton] erroneously given as three carucates instead of two. The obvious explanation is that the scribe, by a slip of the pen, has attributed the rating of Much Woolton to Little Woolton, and vice versa.